As it is generally known, electronic calendaring systems are becoming more and more commonly used among computer users. Existing calendaring tools automatically check the electronic calendars of team members for open time slots, propose alternative meeting times, schedule team meetings or appointments and notify/remind users of scheduled events through electronic mail messages.
When using an electronic calendar to schedule a meeting among multiple participants spread out over multiple time-zones, it would be desirable for the calendaring system to select a meeting time that works well for all participants, or at least a majority of them. However, while existing electronic calendars include a single time zone application setting, it cannot be selectively overridden on a per-day, or per-time basis. In addition, some existing calendaring systems completely ignore a participant's time zone when determining whether they are available for a meeting. Further, although Microsoft Windows® and other operating systems have a user setting for a current time zone, this setting merely enables the user to indicate the time zone they are currently in. For example, a user of such a feature in New York can indicate that they are currently using Eastern Standard Time (EST). However, such existing systems are often ineffective, and inflexible, especially for scheduling frequent business travelers, since they do not allow time zones to be specified into the future.
To address this problem, users have been forced to manually enter place-holder appointments to prevent others from scheduling meetings at times that they will be unavailable because of the time zone they will be in. For example, when a user whose primary office is on the East Coast travels to the West Coast, they might schedule “fake” place-holder appointments in the early morning (i.e. Eastern Standard Time), in order to prevent others from scheduling meetings before the start of their work day while they are on Pacific Standard Time (PST). Such manual procedures currently used to address this problem are laborious and time consuming.
Some existing systems provide automatic current location detection, via Internet Protocol (IP) address analysis or other means, in order to determine where the user is located at the present time. These systems allow the user's schedule to indicate which time zone the user is in at the present time. However, especially for frequently traveling users, location detection systems are insufficient, since they cannot accurately determine the time zone a user will be in at a point in the future, e.g. at times being considered for scheduling a meeting.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,647,370 includes an enhanced personal information manager (PIM) that allows the user to specify three “clocks” for the user interface display: 1) the “home” time zone (where the user most often is), 2) the “local” time zone (where the user is at the present time) and 3) a “remote” time zone. The system also converts time zones and displays them to the user, receives GPS (Global Positioning System) signals to detect changes in the user's local time zone, and converts the user's calendar display automatically. However, this system includes no group scheduling features, or any techniques for specifying the location or time-zone that a specific user will be in at a specific future time, and is not granular enough to support scheduling on an hour by hour basis in a future time zone.
It would accordingly be desirable to have a new system that enables a user to indicate time zones in their electronic calendar for corresponding time periods in the future (e.g. next week the user will be in Dublin, the week after in Las Vegas, etc.). Such a system would further make the future time zone information it collects available for scheduling purposes, in order to correctly identify free times even for frequently traveling users.